Chris Lesinski

Very old man on the sidewalk tells me, "it's a nice day!" It is!

Apple TV just announced that (for the first time ever) this weekend's LA Galaxy vs. Houston Dynamo match will be shot entirely on an iPhone 17 Pro. Here's what the setup looked like last year when they began testing it during MLB games.

This was an amazing and incredibly damning experiment using Microsoft Copilot, by @adamjkucharski kucharski.substack.com/p/real-signals…

“I watched a freshman I knew sign the declaration that he’d done his homework without A.I. as ChatGPT was still open in the next window — while on the deck of a yacht party financed by venture capitalists.” nytimes.com/2026/05/17/opi…

Apparently I say "strategy" enough at home that my 6-year old now has one for her misbehaving imaginary kittens. She used the word perfectly. Kittens don't stand a chance.

@Lucas_Shaw What are the 3 fastest-growing companies in entertainment that no one is talking about?

I haven't done a reader mailbag in a while. What questions do people have about the state of the media & entertainment business?

Day 1 experience : - 3 giant full-screen walls of gibberish error text - Transcription randomly stops when I talk for several minutes, with no audio feedback, so I keep talking and lose part of the session - Dictation misses that even Siri gets right - Randomly turns text into bullet points - Editing notes is frustrating because the keyboard overlaps the note area and hides the cursor; won’t let me scroll down to reveal cursor - Have to switch out of the active app into the Whisper app just to use dictation - Homepage is useless, I would expect a transcript app to have a “transcribe now” button

I’ve been using Whisper Flow for a day and I have no idea what the hype is about. Someone please tell me what I’m missing.

@JoannaStern Well played hahaha

I swear I just checked the calendar to see if it was still April 1.

@daleer161 @bcherny Agree this seems like a no brainer

@bcherny Can we setup a profile of actions that it can have permissions to? Like have permission to any read only actions?

no 👏 more 👏 permission prompts 👏

This is crazy nytimes.com/2026/03/21/wor…

@TVGrimReaper You’re technically right and make a good distinction… but don’t you think buyers absorb signals like “#3 in streaming” or % of TV from decks and sales chatter? Doesn’t set pricing but broader narrative.

This is confused nonsense. The Gauge (Nielsen’s monthly pie chart of US TV usage shares) has nothing to do with ad pricing. It’s for PR / Nielsen marketing purposes only.

@GianTheRios This is a producer (who also happens to edit)

If there’s a single piece of advice I’d give start ups or companies on marketing: - hire an absolutely cracked video editor

@PRcarly Thin news sites, pay-to-play outlets, press release farms, etc; even larger outlets spinning press releases to drive SEO.

@PRcarly I don't want to name names but sites that regurgitate press releases

PREDICTION: Gartner says that PR and earned media budgets will DOUBLE by 2027... and the reason why should matter to every marketer still pouring money into paid channels. Their latest report lays it out: mass adoption of AI as a replacement for traditional search is going to force a fundamental reallocation of marketing spend away from paid, toward earned. THE EVIDENCE: Between the first half of 2024 and first half of 2025, ChatGPT traffic grew 608%, while Google and Bing both declined. Muck Rack's research shows that more than 95% of links cited in AI-generated answers come from non-paid sources, with half of all AI citations coming from content published in the last 11 months. And per Semrush, AI search visitors convert at 4.4x the rate of traditional organic search. We've been watching this play out with our own clients... one saw 38% of their leads this year come directly from earned media surfacing in ChatGPT queries (we got them in the NYT, WSJ, Wired, Forbes, TechCrunch, and others). WHAT THIS MEANS: Gartner is essentially telling CMOs: the channel your customers use to find you is changing to AI; and earned media is what AI trusts. Brands still treating PR as a "nice to have" line item below paid media and SEO are in store for an awakening (I was going to say “rude awakening” but that would be… rude). For PR teams already doing the work, every placement you secure isn't just building credibility with human readers anymore; it’s informing the AI systems that are increasingly deciding which brands get recommended and which ones don't exist. And for marketers who spent the last decade buying their way into "earned-looking" content... native ads, sponsored posts, advertorials pretending to be editorial... AI is seeing right through it. THE NEW REALITY: We're watching a once-in-a-generation shift in how people discover brands. The companies investing in real earned media (that is, true third-party validation) are the ones building a moat. Every month without it? Good luck catching up.

@adrian_horning_ Oh man you people are going to love Kick: refer.kick.co/chris-lesinski I’m a devoted user.

Someone needs to vibe code a Quickbooks alternative ASAP If there was one piece of software that needs to be disrupted, its quickbooks

@hamishmckenzie Have noticed that too!

X is re-running the curiosity-gap headlines strategy pioneered by BuzzFeed and Upworthy in 2010s digital media. It sucks harder this time round!

@garyHeff Excellent use of Quartr

Jeff Shell MIA since referring to Paramount's streaming platform as "Peacock"

@nikitabier People yearn for IRL experiences, part of the touch grass theme

I feel like this startup idea is fundable now.

Pumped to finally share something I’ve been building! Launching March 7: Roklue, a trivia game featuring blockbuster clips from movies and TV, built directly into the #Roku Home Screen. Interactive video changes how viewers discover, browse, and engage with streaming in ways rows of content can’t. This is just a small hint at where interactive streaming can go.